Abstract
Design and experiment of an Automatic Maximum-Searching Machine is described. Recently, a great many number of adaptive and/or optimalizing control systems has been developed. To say nothing of the performance index itself, they make use of some searching procedure for the maximum or minimum of the performance index as a function of manipulated variables. Most of these extremum searching procedures are based on the measurement of the differential coefficient of the function. On the other hand, Sequential Search being a procedure sequentially narrowing the interval containing the point at which a unimodal function possesses. a maximum, its remarkable feature is that no other restriction than unimodality is neccesary.
An experimental machine which performs sequential search with golden section automatically was constructed from elements of analog computer and relays. Experiments on analog computer resulted in expected performance. Further studies are neccesary before applying this machine to on-line optimization of continuous systems.
